


Different Worlds

by SatiricalDraperies



Category: Ready Player One (2018), Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Sorry guys, Swearing, it'll probably end happy tho, mix of book-verse and movie-verse, more angst than i was expecting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-04-16 13:33:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 15,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14165934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SatiricalDraperies/pseuds/SatiricalDraperies
Summary: It's been ten years since Parzival found Halliday's Easter egg, and they're all still trying to figure out what to do now. Shoto's trying to discover all of the Oasis's secrets; Daito's an artist and has three kids; Parzival and Art3mis are married; and Aech is totally, completely lost...until a new VR company gives her the offer of a lifetime.Ok look, I just watched the movie and Aech/Art3mis is the ship I never knew I needed - also, I did change to "choose not to warn" just because I might add major character death or some sort of violence, but there definitely won't be any rape/noncon or underage if that's what you're worried about





	1. Aech

It’s been almost ten years since they won the Battle for the Oasis. That’s what the history textbooks call it, in all caps like that. Their names are everywhere. Wade. Samantha. Toshiro. Akihide. And Helen, of course. No one’s forgotten their tags, but no one uses them anymore. Wade’s made sure of that. He hasn’t been Parzival since he found the egg all those years ago. Once Aech called him Z, like she used to do, and he didn’t even pause. She doesn’t know if Z’s in there at all. Wade’s so much different than she remembers. Despite keeping the Oasis open most of the time, he’s rarely in there. Everytime she goes in she tries to locate him, and he’s never there. She misses their friendship. 

Shoto and Daito are feeling it as well. The three of them still love all the hidden corners of the Oasis. Shoto’s got a bit of an obsession with discovering it all. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to map Halliday’s whole universe, but that’s what keeps him going. If he never finds the end, he can pretend there isn’t one, and then he doesn’t have to figure out what to do next. That’s Aech’s real issue. She doesn’t know what comes next. All of the others have moved on, but she’s still caught up in this stupid Easter egg hunt, searching even after everything’s been found. 

Daito was in the same boat for a while, but he’s found solace in his art. His virtual exhibits that flicker in and out of reality captured the public’s imaginations, and led to him falling in love with another artist. They’ve got three kids now, and a nice little house on a lake somewhere in the Midwest. Aech has met his wife Hanako only once in reality, at their wedding, and they’ve stayed in touch ever since, meeting every week or so in the Oasis. 

She’s waiting on a virtual beach now, motioning for another glass of lemonade, as Hanako’s avatar finally appears.

“How was Oki’s game?” she calls out.

“She made the game-winning three pointer, right as the buzzer went off!” Aech will never figure out how the child of a world-famous Oasis player and an accomplished painter became so obsessed with basketball. She doesn’t think that Oki’s ever created an Oasis avatar, and quite frankly, if she was that athletic and skilled in the real world, she probably wouldn’t either.

Hanako sits down on a wicker chair next to her. “So what’s this week’s invention?”

“Something for Oki, actually, until the twins are old enough to play with her,” Aech begins outlining her plans for a basketball-playing robot, with Hanako adding in thoughts every so often.

She’s got a state-of-the-art lab, access to every part of the Oasis, and a great friend in Hanako, but Aech is still nostalgic for something she’s never had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated! Also if anyone can find anything else for the Aech/Art3mis ship I'm desperate for content over here lol


	2. Sam

D1ana’s avatar is rarely in the Oasis, and when she is, she doesn’t do much. Sometimes she’ll wander around a virtual mall, just window shopping for things she knows she’ll never buy. Other times she goes to an open-air cafe and orders a coffee, no sugar but lots of milk, even though everything in the Oasis tastes the same. Supposedly they’re working on a new upgrade that’ll let you actually taste the food, or smell it at least. D1ana almost thinks that might be worth it, but the barista can’t mess up her drink if it isn’t real. As it is, her coffee’s rarely the right shade of brown for the amount of milk she imagines she wants, but she never says anything. She’s really only there for the people-watching. In real life, people are so boring, or at least the people she spends time with. They’re an endless string of suits and fancy black dresses, using big words to hide that they have no big dreams. D1ana hates it.

Sam doesn’t mind it at all. She curls her hair carefully, precisely, then runs her hand through it haphazardly to make it look natural. She’s got it down to a science, applying her blush just messily enough to look naturally flushed. Her mascara is just heavy enough to make her eyelashes look naturally thick. Even her foundation is placed everywhere except her birthmark, showing off her natural skin. 

Bullshit.

There’s nothing un-natural about her life now, except that nothing feels natural. She’d love to be back to a time when she could wear oversized cardigans and ripped jeans and thick messy eyeliner and not worry about what message she was giving off. She’d love to be back to a time when she had a message of her own to spread. Now it’s just an infinite series of dinners and public events as the wife of the owner and CEO of Gregarious Games. Sure, she’s still famous in her own right as Art3mis, but she wasn’t the one who found the egg. Wade always mentions her role in it, but the media’s reduced her to his love interest, no matter how many times he talks about her “badassery”. She’s the beautiful badass in their relationship, and he’s the man who knew James Halliday better than anyone. 

She slips into a slinky red dress and goes downstairs to meet Wade, who’s anxiously straightening his bowtie.

“Ahh, darling,” he kisses her on the cheek. “You look absolutely beautiful tonight. The Marshalls are thrilled to meet you. I told them how you don’t like crowds, so it’ll be a nice intimate dinner at their place,” he goes on and on, talking all the way there and throughout the dinner so she doesn’t have to.

Sam smiles whenever he looks, and ducks her head so he can’t see how forced it is.


	3. Aech

It’s the tenth anniversary of the Battle for the Oasis, and the five of them are back together again for a celebration. It’s been nine years since they were all in the same room together. Aech hasn’t seen either Wade or Samantha since the one-year anniversary party. She didn’t go to their wedding eight years ago, and neither Parzival or Art3mis have logged on to the Oasis at all after that. She supposes they’ve been too busy honey-mooning all these years. Why go to a virtual world when the love of your life is in the real one?

Toshiro and Hanako pick her up at her workshop. They both look splendid in avant-garde suits. Not for the first time in her life, Aech feels out of place in her old tuxedo.

“Retro-chic! I like it,” Hanako greets her with a kiss on each cheek, and Toshiro hugs her.

“It’s been a while, Aech. Good to see you.” His smile is genuine, and Aech starts to think that this stupid dinner might actually be bearable.

Of course, this is all before they arrive at the hotel and Wade and Samantha get out of their car - and Aech doesn’t need to check her vitals to know that her heart’s beating like crazy out of her chest. Because Samantha - Samantha goddamn Watts - has her hair long and loose and is wearing this stupid little silk dress and obnoxiously tall heels and a huge rock on her finger - and she looks absolutely breathtaking. 

Aech is screwed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi so I know this was super short but a) it's currently tech week for the play I'm in so I'm super busy and b) the next chapter is almost 1,000 words already and there's a lot more I want to happen there (I might separate it into two chapters so that I can post more frequently but idk)
> 
> Anyways have a nice day and thanks for reading this self indulgent angst-fest of mine


	4. Sam

Sam is screwed. She thought she could face her old friends, but now that they’re here, she’s losing her confidence. Her facade’s breaking, too. She and Wade greeted Akihide, but now that Wade’s excused himself to go talk to some executive something-or-other, she practically runs away.

She’s lost all track of time in the bathroom when Helen comes in.

“Go away,” she mutters. Helen doesn’t. 

“Samantha,” she says, and there’s pity in her voice, but something else too that Sam doesn’t want to place, but that sounds like friendship. “Samantha,” she says again, and this time Sam looks up. 

Helen hasn’t changed at all since Sam last saw her. She’s still so unapologetically herself, with her oversized tuxedo jacket and hair tied back and a smudge of grease on her face. She must have come straight from her workshop, working on who-knows-what, Sam thinks, before realizing that she shouldn’t care. She and Helen live in different worlds now. 

The thought makes her sadder than she realized she’d be, and Sam has to bow her head again to hide the tears welling up. Helen doesn’t say anything, but she hugs her and holds her tight until Sam thinks she’ll never cry again. She’s held in ten years of growing frustration at her inability to do anything meaningful. Granted, she didn’t get much done during her first years as a gunter, but she was trying. She had a goal, and she thought that reaching it would magically make her life better. She was stupid. 

And now she’s...what? Her life is so stable. There’s no more worrying about growing enough food, or losing everything in the Oasis, or the IOI finding them. She’s completely free from want. Wade’s made sure of that - he’d spend his whole fortune on her if she asked. He knows she never would, but the unspoken offer is still out there. That’s just the way he is, selflessly considerate, once his own needs are taken care of. Sam knows she shouldn’t think like that, but she can’t help remembering the boy she first met who pulled her off her bike to stop her from zeroing out. His greatest fear was failure then. Sam doesn’t think that’s changed at all. He’s just playing another game now, one that she’s caught up in as well.

“I should probably go back out there,” she says, wiping away the mascara trails on her cheeks. “Wade must be wondering where I am.”

“Fuck Wade,” Helen says. Sam snorts a bit. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Not really,” Sam says. “I don’t even… I don’t even know why I’m crying.” She pulls a makeup wipe from her bag, and is back to looking flawless in a few seconds. “See? Good as new.” 

Helen doesn’t look convinced. “Well, if you ever figure it out, I’m staying in room 108 if you need to talk.” She pauses for a moment, then places a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “We’ve all had a rough time since… We’re all here for you.”

Sam smiles, a real one this time, and for a moment Aech has Art3mis back.

But then Sam picks up her purse and gives Helen the condescending smirk that all the other rich women have. She’s got to get into character before all the cameras are on her. 

“Thanks for everything. I’ll see you later, mmkay? Oh, and it’s Sam now.” She blows a kiss and pushes open the bathroom door, leaving a shocked Helen behind her.

Sam weaves her way across the room to Wade. He always stands out in a crowd - tonight he’s wearing a holographic trench coat that seems to be literally glowing. Sam presses herself to his side, letting her matte purple dress blend into him. She lets him kiss her while the cameras flash, but quickly excuses herself to their table where Akihide, Toshiro, and Hanako are already seated. 

“Hello everyone,” she says sweetly. She sits down next to Hanako. “I love your dress, who’s it by?”

Hanako goes on to describe her hand painting technique for different fabrics, and Sam just smiles and nods. She’s sure it’s fascinating and takes lots of skill, but quite honestly, this new socialite version of herself couldn’t care less. Hanako and Toshiro are just so...ordinary, with their arts-and-crafts projects and children and small house. Akihide, too. He hasn’t changed at all, still stuck in the Oasis. 

And Helen. Sam hasn’t heard about her doing anything. She figure’s that she’s still holed up in a workshop somewhere, building things that do absolutely nothing. Whatever. As long as she’s happy, right? At least Sam is still doing something to improve the world. There was that charity dinner last week, and she went to the grand opening of a new hospital in the Stacks recently. Wade was really proud of that. Watts Community Hospital, right where his old home with Alice used to be. 

He’s told her all about his old life - the good, the bad, and the nerdy. Sam wanted to reciprocate at first, but there was so much to do, rebuilding the world, and then it just didn’t seem to matter as much. Wade was so focused on the now at that point. She almost broke down and told him everything on their wedding night, when her dad wasn’t there to walk her down the aisle.

Almost.

Now she’s all poise and perfection, the strong and silent and sexy type. As far as “types” go, it could probably be worse. At least all she has to do is give a Mona Lisa smile. It’s not quite the same as Art3mis’s smirk, but that was an act too. It was closer to her real self, but it was still an act.

Sam sighs. It’s all just one act after another, but she doesn’t even have a hidden motive or reasoning now. The evil corporation was overthrown; the Oasis was saved; her dad’s death was revenged. She’s always been a fighter - and now there’s nothing left for her to fight except herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one took a while to publish! I'm in a play this weekend, but after that I should be able to write more. And again, thank you all so much for reading/commenting - it means a lot to me and I'm so glad that other people like this ship as much as I do!


	5. Aech

They’re showing footage of the Battle again. Aech is sick of it. Everyone saw it live; most of them fought. It’s really just a lead-in to Wade’s big speech. He gives the same speech at all of these events. First, he pays his respects to Halliday. Then, a thank you to everyone who followed him. Sometimes his big rallying speech is inserted here, but they’ve mostly stopped doing that. The last people he mentions are his friends and his wife. His brave, beautiful, badass wife. 

Aech thought it was cute for a while, but he never goes beyond that when talking about Samantha. It’s always brave, beautiful, badass, in that order. Aech hasn’t talked with Samantha in a while, but she knows enough about people to know that no one can be summed up in three words. Either Wade doesn’t know that, or he doesn’t care.

This is what Aech is expecting.

This is not what happens.

Right before Daito hits Sorrento, the image sputters and shuts down. For a moment, Aech wonders if this is Wade’s latest publicity stunt, but as soon as she sees his face, she knows this is no trick. Something’s wrong.

“Nothing’s wrong!” Wade says way too enthusiastically. “Don’t worry, it’s just a minor technical error,” he smiles broadly, but Aech can tell from the picture-perfect symmetry of his smile that it’s forced. Some college kids run over frantically to check all of the wiring connections, while a tiny girl with glasses as large as her face looks at Wade’s personal computer. She fiddles helplessly for a bit, before her manager grabs the computer, and with a couple clicks the projection is back up - but it’s not the battle anymore. 

A pair of lips dominates the front of the room. Despite their size, the emerging voice is nearly silent, not that it matters. Even if they were just mouthing words, everyone in the room would swear they could hear it loudly and clearly. 

“People come to the Oasis for all the things they can do, but they stay for all the things they can be.” It’s clearly mocking Wade, who’s frozen in place. “Well, we want to change the world - quite literally. Welcome to the Badlands.”

The lips pixelate out, and are replaced with a seemingly infinite darkness. Aech finds herself squinting with everyone else to see. It feels like all the light’s been sucked from the room and condensed into the void in front of them. Aech’s rational side knows that isn’t possible, but she’s still freaked out a bit. It’s not every day that someone’s able to hack into the most secure computer in the world and create physics-shattering illusions.

“What are the limits of your imagination?” and they’re talking right to Aech, and the entire room around her transforms into lines of code, and she can see how everything connects, she can see the possibilities. 

Aech doesn’t just suspend her disbelief, she kicks it out the door and burns it for good measure.

If this Badlands technology is real, it’s going to be a serious competitor to the Oasis, which hasn’t grown or changed much at all since Halliday’s time. There’s something to be said for the complete preservation of a man’s life, but one person’s mind can only stretch so far. As far as Aech can tell from the code being shown, the Badlands uses the collective brainpower of everyone involved to create...what? Aech doesn’t know what exactly is forming around her, but she knows that she’s got to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Houston, we have a plot! (finally it's not just angst we're actually getting somewhere)
> 
> Anyways, I'm going to be away from April 15-21, so I might not be able to update before then, and I definitely won't be writing that week, but late April? Maybe? I have AP exams and finals coming up, but I'll try to write this as I procrastinate studying.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments are always appreciated - I love to hear from you guys!


	6. Sam

They’ve been arguing all night, a back-and-forth of all the arguments they can think of for both sides. Neither one of them actually takes a stance. This Badlands technology is far too unknown - and therefore controversial - for that.

“Just think of the possibilities!” 

“I thought the Oasis had enough possibilities.”

“This is how the free market’s supposed to work, though.”

“By crashing their competitor’s banquet?”

“By being innovative!”

“We’re innovative!”

“We’re not. Halliday was.”

That shuts them both up, no matter who said it. They were both thinking it.

“I miss him,” Wade says quietly.

“I know,” Sam says.

“But it’s not even that. I miss the challenge, the adventure, the...impossibility of it all. I miss being Parzival. I miss the other gunters. I miss Daito, and Shoto, and Aech,” he pauses for a moment. “I miss you.”

“I’m right here,” Sam tries to say reassuringly.

“Yeah, but…”

What’s he going to say? It’s not the you I thought I was getting? Sam tried so hard to make this relationship work. She loved Wade - she loves him still. She told him that she was always acting in the Oasis. She told him that he only fell in love with part of her. She told him all her issues, her tragic backstory and all. 

And he said he loved the real her.

But now she’s Sam Cook, not Art3mis, not even Samantha, and she guesses that maybe Wade does love the ‘real’ her, the parts that she hides deep down. She thinks the idea of a ‘real’ her is stupid, and she thinks that maybe Wade realizes this about her. 

Maybe Wade knows her better than she knows herself, but she doesn’t really think so. She knew him back when he was just a nerdy kid who could talk about obscure video games all day, but didn’t catch on to his best friend being a girl for years.

His best friend. Aech. Helen. Sam should go see what she thinks of all this. 

“You’re... you’re…” Wade’s still sputtering.

“I have to go,” she says, and it’s squeakier than she thought, but oh well, and she’s grabbing her bag and shoes and running out the door to room 108. Running away from Wade, to Helen.

The elevator’s too slow coming, so she jogs awkwardly down three flights of stairs, then runs to the other end of the hotel, speed-walking past the lobby. And it’s the wrong hallway, so she has to try to act natural going back through the lobby and taking a right at the vending machines instead of going straight. And now she’s finally outside Helen’s door, and she pretends to check the number, 108, yup, that's it, to give herself a chance to catch her breath. 

Why was she here again? To talk to Helen about the Badlands. Why was she so frantic, though? Sam takes a deep breath and tries to come up with a valid reason for knocking on Helen’s door at… She checks her fancy new rose gold watch. It’s hideous. It’s also 1:47 in the middle of the night, and way too late to pay a casual visit.

Whatever. 

She knocks, once, then twice, then a third time, timidly. Maybe Helen’s asleep. Maybe she’s with someone. 

Sam squints through the peephole. She can’t see if anyone’s in there or not. There’s definitely a laptop on the counter, left open. That’s odd. Helen would never be far from all her work saved on there, so if she was in the room, she definitely would’ve heard Sam’s knock. And she definitely would’ve taken the computer with her if she left, or at least closed it up and hidden it somewhere, which leads Sam to think that something’s horribly, horribly wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Thanks for being patient while I was away and didn't have my laptop. I did plan out the next few chapters though so now I just have to write them (easier said than done). Also I just want y'all to know that *after* I had written Aech's hotel room as being 108, I was given - you guessed it - room 108 at the hotel I was staying at. 
> 
> I don't know what kind of sign that is, but I'll take it! Comments are always much appreciated - I love talking with you guys!


	7. Aech

How the hell did they create the Badlands? Aech has been working on this non-stop for almost two hours now after the dinner and she’s still no closer. It’s not that she needs more computing power - she’s got the strongest computer in the world, built herself with all the resources of the Oasis at her beck and call. 

And it’s not that she needs more information, either. She saw the code. It was right there. Granted, it’s not like she was in the right state of mind to be memorizing all the intricacies, but she got a pretty good look at the overall pattern and function, which should be enough. After all these years, she’s pretty comfortable with every type of software known to humankind. The style of code seems fairly straight forward, too. This shouldn’t be as difficult as it is.

Another hour passes. 

She’s getting there.

Forty five minutes bring forty five lines of code. It’s a start, and she’s getting real close to their basic structure, but something’s not fitting.

It’s been a half hour, and something’s still not fitting, but it’s a different something this time. As soon as she fixes one issue, three others pop up in its place. They should’ve called the dumb program Hydra at this rate. She’s passed through all the stages of grief and is back to rage again, coupled with a bit of disgust and, if she’s being honest with herself, envy. The Badlands are a masterpiece. From the concept to the execution, even to the somewhat ill-timed introduction, it’s brilliant. Aech only wishes she could’ve gotten a better look at the mechanics of it all. There’s no way whoever built the Badlands would let her anywhere near their secrets, though. She’s too closely tied to the Oasis, to their competitors. 

What a shame. She’ll just have to keep struggling on her own then. 

The digital display on the wall resets to 00:00, but Aech doesn’t notice. She’s been glued to the overly bright screen for far too long, if you take the new healthcare adverts seriously, but she doesn’t notice. Even if she did, there’s no way she would have cared. Not when she’s so close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why's this chapter so short? 
> 
> Because halfway through I decided I wanted to add another POV character to the mix... coming soon to an AO3 near you


	8. Lidia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I post this chapter, we're at 486 hits, which is super close to 500. 500 hits! That's absolutely wild! And there's no way this would've happened without all you fantastic readers, which is why I want to do something to celebrate your support - if you leave a comment on this chapter with any sort of request/prompt relating to Ready Player One (doesn't have to be this ship or AU!) I'll write you a little something :) Again, thank you all so much! <3

And Aech is close to the Badlands. Lidia’s been watching her through the security cams ever since the party broke up early. After ‘accidentally’ triggering the Badlands presentation on Watts’ computer and letting that idiot of a manager do the rest, she stepped back to observe the chaos.

Oh, the chaos! The look on Watts’ face! It was priceless. She could've watched it all day. 

But she had a job to do. The Badlands team isn't…failing, exactly, but they’re definitely floundering. What they need is a new mind and personality. Tensions have been running high for far too long now, and it’s crossed the line from encouraging competition to becoming counterproductive. Without some fresh blood, Lidia doesn't know how much longer the project will survive. 

Aech is exactly what they need. She’s brilliant, that much is clear. Lidia doesn’t know anyone else who could figure out the Badlands technology from just a quick glance. Even Justin, the programmer, spent nearly seven months coming up with a way to execute the concept Fisher came up with. Aech’s intuition combined with her determination make her an ideal Badlands employee, but that’s not enough for Fisher. It’s not enough for Aech to be far more qualified than whoever else the other candidates are. Just like everything else in this crazy nostalgic video game world, it’s a competition, and one that Lidia intends to win.

Step one, recruiting Aech. 

She’s hunched over a massive laptop, back to the door. Her hands are moving a mile a minute, only pausing for her to bite her lip and scowl for a moment, thinking, before honing in even more intensely. It’s addictive, seeing her thought process in every subconscious movement. Lidia almost wants to watch her all night just to see if she can replicate their work, but that can’t be allowed to happen. If the Badlands code got out, it would be disastrous. Fisher almost didn’t let her show a flash of it at the dinner, saying that it was too much of a risk. It was a gamble, certainly, but a calculated one. He really ought to have more faith in Lidia by now. She calculates everything - and her calculations are never wrong.

Neither are Aech’s, apparently. Lidia’s wholly invested in her now that she’s seen her at work. Justin thinks she’s close to working out the code, too, judging by the tapping noise in her earpiece. He only fidgets when he feels threatened, and since he’s safe at headquarters, it must be an intellectual challenger that’s getting in his head.

“Get in place for the extraction, now!” he hisses. Lidia raises an eyebrow where he can’t see, and leaves the custodial closet where she was hiding. She walks past one, two, three doors before stopping in front of Aech’s.

“In position now,” she mutters. 

“Okay, I’m switched to the camera right across from you.” Lidia turns and gives a brief salute to the nearly-hidden security system. Justin snorts in her ear and begins his countdown. At first Lidia thought it was silly that they were all pretending to be spies, or something, but now it gives her a chance to get into character. Lidia is a creature of routine, and this is one of her favorites.

“Five,” she stretches her neck.

“Four,” and she cracks her knuckles.

“Three,” and “two,” and she runs through her opening line, and straightens her glasses, and by the time he gets to “one,” her hand’s just beginning to twist open the doorknob. She’s prepared for a confrontation, or a fight, or at least an argument loud enough for the next room over to hear, but Aech doesn’t even notice when she enters. 

Lidia freezes. She clears her throat. Nothing.

“Goddammit Aech,” she mutters under her breath. “How do you not notice someone breaking into your room?” Even Justin’s got better self preservation techniques than her, and Lidia doesn’t think he’d survive an hour left to his own devices. She takes a couple more steps towards Aech. Cursing her height, not for the first time today, she peers around Aech’s hunched form to look at her laptop screen - and sees her own face, magnified.

Aech laughs. She laughs and laughs at Lidia’s confusion, before finally turning around so she’s sitting backwards in her chair, arms crossed on top of the back, still laughing. Lidia’s eyes look even wider than they usually do through her glasses. This is not how this is supposed to be going, she thinks. What happened to the suave secret agent? Goddammit. She’s got to get control back of the situation. Think. What would James Bond do? Probably flirt with her and then shoot a couple guys. Lidia legitimately considers this for a moment, but the possibility is ultimately lost when Aech finally stops laughing.

“So, you’re the sniper who’s here to kill me for discovering your little secrets?” She laughs again, and then trails off into seriousness. “But actually though, are you here for my life or my laptop?”

“Neither,” Lidia says, still a bit confused. “How did you-?”

“Know you were here? Please,” she rolls her eyes. “Did you really think I wouldn’t set up my own security?”

“Well then, ah, you’re clearly very skilled, and…” she fades out. Quite honestly, Lidia’s a bit starstruck. It was one thing to watch her lead an army into battle when Lidia was only fifteen, and then to follow her work online for the next ten years, but it’s another thing altogether to finally meet her. She’s everything Lidia had hoped she would be. She’s snarky, but smart enough that it doesn’t even matter. Lidia doesn’t know who Fisher’s other candidates are, but she already knows that Aech could beat any of them with one hand tied behind her back.

“What, did you come here just to ogle at me? Get on with the program,” Aech rolls her eyes and looks down at Lidia.

“The Badlands,” Lidia blurts out, and what happened to her carefully scripted recruitment speech? “We’re, ah, hiring.”

And now Aech smiles for real, a crooked grin growing on her face.

“Fantastic,” she says. “When do I start?”


	9. Sam

The bad news? None of the newer hotel rooms have actual locks that Sam could pick to get in.

The good news? It’s all automated, which means that she just has to break into the hotel’s system and unlock Helen’s door that way. Easy peasy.

Sam ducks into a nearby closet, hooking a mop under the door handle to keep it closed. Thankfully, she’s always prepared for anything, whether that means extra lip gloss, a protein bar, or a small, easily concealed tablet. She quickly pulls up the sign-in screen for hotel staff, and activates a program she wrote a while back to circumvent any password barriers. It won’t get her past any serious security networks, but she’s assuming that doors have to be opened remotely fairly often, so that function can’t be guarded too closely.

As the program downloads, she tries to think through what might’ve happened. She doesn’t know what was on that particular laptop. It might’ve been nothing important, something that Helen felt safe leaving out in the open. Or maybe Helen didn’t worry about people seeing her open laptop because she knew her security systems would stop any intruders.

Sam chides herself. There could be any number of reasons for what Sam saw. And yet she still feels uneasy. Maybe she’s still on edge from the Badlands hacking earlier tonight. Maybe that has something to do with Helen’s disappearance. Helen wouldn’t have been the one to sell them out. Right? Her shock seemed real, but it also looked more like fascination than fear. That doesn’t mean anything, though. Sam’s just overthinking this. Helen would never do anything to damage the Oasis.

Her tablet dings. She’s in. Sam quickly pulls up a floor plan and locates room 108. She taps on it, and a menu of options pops up, with “OPEN” right at the top. Is it really that easy?

She taps on it, and comes out of the supply closet and walks back down the hall to see what happened. Helen’s door is still closed, but it swings open easily enough for Sam.

“Helen?” she calls again. Maybe she just didn’t hear her the first time. Sam doesn't have to go into full-on panic mode yet. There’s still no response, though, so Sam takes it as an invitation to step into the room and investigate, pulling the door shut behind her. There’s no sign that Helen was planning on leaving - not only is her laptop still out, but her suit jacket is draped over a chair and there’s a half full glass of water on the table. Wherever Helen went, she left in a hurry.

Clearly she wasn’t in a big enough hurry to cover her tracks, though, because when Sam finally looks to see what’s on the laptop screen, she sees four words that make her stomach churn.

WELCOME TO THE BADLANDS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayyy! First of all, I'm so grateful for the overwhelmingly positive feedback on the last chapter. I first got into fandom around 2012, when OCs were the deadliest of sins, and I was still a bit scared to not only create a new character, but to give her a POV chapter, so thank you all for showing your support!
> 
> That being said, I have a massive exam later this week, along with a pretty intensive lab that's taking up a lot of my time outside class, so I don't know when the next chapter will be up. (Granted, that's what I've been saying for the past couple weeks, and I think I've been pretty good about posting, so who knows?)
> 
> Anyways, thanks for all the support! Comments are always appreciated - I love hearing from you! :)


	10. Aech

When Aech asked Lidia when she would begin, she wasn’t expecting the answer to be immediately.

But here she is, about to be led into the headquarters of the most progressive tech company since Gregarious Games. Lidia insisted on blindfolding her for the helicopter ride over, but now that they’ve landed, her eyes are free to analyze their setup as much as possible.

They don’t look like much from the outside. And by not much, Aech means they look like they collectively own two laptops that were old ten years ago and maybe a bit of dust. It’s not impressive. She’s beginning to regret this snap decision, but at the same time, appearances can be deceiving. She just hopes their intellectual property is better than the dilapidated property she’s currently standing on. The pilot’s landed their helicopter on top of one of the few remaining upright skyscrapers. Aech is a bit shocked that it’s still standing, actually. It must be pretty old - all the rich people started expanding underground, and the poor people, well, they just created the Stacks. No one’s built any new skyscrapers in probably forty years, and no one’s lived in them for half that long. Whoever the Badlands are, they’re taking some pretty intense steps to make sure no one bothers them.

“Right this way,” the pilot gestures towards a rusty fire escape staircase. Aech gives him a look. 

“After you.”

“What, not as nice as you’re used to?” he says, then laughs. “Suit yourself.” 

He steps onto the grille, and the staircase begins to fold slowly underneath him, probably with some sort of hydraulic set-up. Aech’s eyes widen. Behind her, Lidia chuckles and shakes her head as she moves aside a pile of rubble to reveal a control panel. She enters a code and the helicopter’s landing pad shifts a bit, then lowers into the building. When it comes back up about thirty seconds later, the helicopter’s already been moved. Lidia covers up the control panel and the roof’s back to looking like an innocuous ruin of a time gone past.

“What is this place?” Aech asks incredulously.

“I told you already,” Lidia says, smiling, as she steps onto the fire escape and offers a hand to Aech. “You’re in the Badlands now.”

* * *

“Damn,” Aech mutters as she and Lidia arrive on the main floor.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” Lidia sounds wistful, looking at the empire Fisher built.

“Yeah,” Aech agrees, lost for words. The room has been completely opened up, wall to wall - it’s twice as high as normal, as well. Screens of all shapes and sizes cover the walls, floor to ceiling. Aech counts six people on moving ladders checking on different displays. It almost seems like a control room for a space mission on steroids. There’s no way any one person could even begin to comprehend the amount of data that’s being shown and processed. It’s the most organized chaos Aech has ever seen. And the people observing all the graphs don’t even seem to be doing anything with the data they’re looking at, unless there’s another floor to this complex with analysts. This seems unlikely though, because why would they need people looking at it here then? She wonders what they’re actually doing - and what they’re monitoring.

Her eyes are drawn towards a massive hologram in the center of the room. She recognizes it somewhat from the first time she saw the Badlands code, but this is much more extensive. Code is swirling around in a dense, near-incomprehensible hurricane, but she can see the underlying structure beneath it all. A woman with hot pink hair is standing in the middle of it all, grabbing sections with hand movements and moving them around, occasionally throwing something out altogether where it dissolves into fragments of green light. Between the bright green reflections in her aviator sunglasses and the flowing movements of her trench coat as she bops to whatever’s playing in her headphones, she gives off a crazy, otherworldly, mad scientist presence. 

“That’s Wanda,” Lidia says, noticing Aech’s stare. “She’s the one who’s really expanded our technology. Justin - the guy who flew us out here - he coded the original Badlands, and he still oversees all of the major updates, but he doesn’t have the same dramatic flair Wanda does,” she laughs. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to everyone before the competition starts.”

“What competition?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took much longer than it should have I'm sorry y'all but hey it got up eventually lol
> 
> Also if you've been getting bored of waiting for these nerds to get together I have a short high school/prom au https://archiveofourown.org/works/14749086 that was originally supposed to be published when we hit 500 hits over here but clearly I missed that deadline (wow look at me taking forever with literally everything) so here it is now! Honestly it's so good to take a breather from this and write some plotless fluff so if anyone has any requests I'm always open :)
> 
> ok I think that's it thanks for reading and commenting


	11. D1ana

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow look at all these updates
> 
> also I think this is the longest chapter yet, so that's exciting

D1ana’s logged back into the Oasis for the first time in weeks, but she actually has a mission this time. It’s to figure out what the public knows, she tells herself. It’s to see what they think. 

And she is doing it to satiate her own curiosity, but she’s also using the Oasis as just that - an oasis from all the craziness that’s been going on. After discovering that Helen had jumped ship - “the door was already open when I arrived at the perfectly reasonable hour of eight o’clock in the morning; I was merely concerned” - Wade was furious. 

“How dare she?” he was pacing, his fists and teeth clenched. “And you’re a hundred percent positive of what you saw? You were the first one to see it, and her door was just open like that? That’s suspicious. You’re sure you didn’t see anything else?”

Sam's breathing quickened at this, but not from fear. If Wade wouldn’t trust her, then who would? She needed to be able to sell this lie, that she didn't hack the network, that she was only paying a visit to an old friend.

“I’m telling you, I just thought I’d stop by to see if she wanted to have breakfast, and she wasn’t there. I don’t know what else to tell you, Wade. I’m sorry.”

She is sorry, but not for the reasons Wade might suspect. She’s sorry for never lowering this mask. She’s sorry for losing touch with her friends. She’s sorry for losing touch with reality. And now she’s sorry for what she’s about to do to Wade, via D1ana. 

The very first thing D1ana sees once she’s in the Oasis is a billboard, which isn’t that shocking. The Oasis is supposed to reflect reality, and reality is currently a bit of a consumerist nightmare. But you get used to it. All the bright colors and ads fade into the background after a while. You acclimate to the visual barrage of thousands of competing businesses, selling increasingly insane and useless services.

No, the billboard itself isn’t odd. The simplicity of it is what really shocks D1ana. White sans serif words on a black background. She spins around, slowly, taking it all in. Every possible advertising spot has the exact same message.

WELCOME TO THE BADLANDS

and underneath that, in slightly smaller but no less jolting letters,

NOW HIRING. CALL 415 555 2342

Needless to say, D1ana calls the number. 

“Name?”

It’s a pleasant female voice, unassuming enough, but D1ana doesn’t entirely trust it.

“Diana,” she says, after a pause.

“Just Diana?”

“Just Diana,” she confirms.

“Alright Diana,” it continues without hesitation. “You’re competing with millions of people for only one opening, so we have a couple quick questions to determine whether you have the potential to work in the Badlands. Shall we begin?”

D1ana nods, even though the voice on the phone won’t be able to see it. They keep talking anyways.

“Let’s start with something simple. What is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?”

Ah. It’s not enough for them to copy Halliday’s technology, they have to steal his pop culture trivia tests as well.

“Forty two,” she says. Immediately after she finishes speaking, the voice is back at it with another question.

“What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?”

“Man,” D1ana yawns.

“What have I got in my pocket?”

“The One Ring, precious,” she hisses in her best Gollum impression, which, admittedly, is pretty bad, but so is this game of riddles. They really have to step it up a bit if they want to find one person in a crowd of millions.

It keeps going for a while, with D1ana spitting out answers as fast as the voice throws them at her. Finally it announces, “last question. If you, Diana, answer this correctly, you’ll be entered into the final pool of candidates. There are five houses in five different colors…”

D1ana starts to laugh. “This is Einstein’s riddle, right? Who owns the fish? Well I’ll save you the trouble of reading out the whole situation. It’s the…” she whispers the solution.

“Correct! Congratulations,” it pauses. “Diana!” She rolls her eyes at how choppy the robotic fill-in-the-blank personalization is. “You’re the first to pass my test. My name is Georgia. I’m your sponsor for the competition. We’re sending a car to your location to bring you to the next round now.”

She has a sponsor? And they’re bringing her to another place? It better be virtual. There’s no way Sam will be able to sneak out and disappear for however long this competition takes. She really ought to just drop out now. That’s it. She’ll just call Georgia back and tell her that she’s honored to be considered, she really is, but unfortunately she won’t be able to continue, now isn’t that a shame, but she’s sure they’ll find someone else just as qualified, probably even more so, and this is a great plan, it's brilliant, it's foolproof, but D1ana only has time to type in the first few digits before a sleek black Cadillac pulls up in the street besides her and a tall blonde woman steps out of the back seat.

“Diana!” she clasps one of D1ana’s hands firmly with both of her own. “I’m Georgia! I’m so excited to meet you! Come on, get in!”

D1ana gapes at her for a moment before letting herself be led into the car next to Georgia.


	12. Lidia

After Aech goes down a level from the main workroom to her temporary home for this competition, Lidia takes the elevator up a floor to meet with Fisher and the other employees that chose to nominate candidates.

“Lidia! Nice of you to finally join us,” Fisher says, the words leaving his mouth almost instantaneously as she enters the room. He’s standing, as always, with his back to the entrance. Lidia doesn’t even wonder how he knows that it’s her who just walked in. He has a way of knowing these things, and it’s best just to not ask. 

“Sorry, I got a bit tied up. Not all of us can just pluck people out of our competitor’s world,” she says, making sure to emphasize the word competitor’s. She knows she’s going to get some judgement for choosing one of the most prominent Oasis players of all time, so she wants to make sure everyone knows exactly where her loyalties lie. After looking around the room to make sure the others understand, she takes her usual seat in an old black office chair with the stuffing coming out. It’s one of the tallest seats in the room, but she still feels short compared to Fisher’s six-foot-something stance, especially since the man never seems to sit down or stay still for more than a minute. It’s a bit infuriating, honestly, but he’s a good enough leader that she can put up with his quirks.

“You’re right, as always, Lidia.” 

Max's condescending voice quickly fills the room with its fake honeyed tones. He’s held a grudge against Lidia ever since they were hired around the same time and she became one of Fisher’s favorites almost instantly, while he had to work his way up the ranks. “Not all of us can, oh, how did you phrase it, ‘pluck’ people from the Oasis.” Lidia tries to hide her grimace. She knows he came from a lower middle class family in Chicago - there’s no need for this faux-pretentious act.

“In fact, we were just discussing this very point,” and here Max pauses to look right at her to make sure she understands what he's really getting at - she's not special at all in his eyes. “Exactly half of us have brought our nominees here in real life, and half of us have only brought their avatars. Isn’t that absolutely fascinating?”

Lidia gives him a sickly sweet smile. “Absolutely.”

“If you’re done with your statistics discussion, I think we ought to look at the candidates themselves to begin with, since one of them will end up working with us,” Fisher steers the meeting back towards its original purpose. “Max, you’ve been talking a lot. Who’s your candidate?”

Max smiles, clearly pleased to be presenting first, not noticing Fisher’s backhanded insult. “Ashley Morris, age 27, from Texas,” he pulls up a hologram of a buff blonde woman. She’s smiling in her picture, but there's no sign of warmth to be seen anywhere in her face. Instead, it’s the baring of teeth right before a predator pounces. Lidia decides she doesn’t like her. “She studied software development and received her master’s degree from Princeton,”

Oh. So now it’s the name game. Lidia doesn’t know where Aech went to college, or if she even went at all, but she figures she can still win this particular type of battle easily.

“Thank you, Max. I’ll go next.” He pauses with his mouth gaping from the shock of being interrupted, but Lidia continues regardless. “My candidate is Helen Harris, more commonly known as Aech.” She doesn’t need to say anything else. Everyone knows exactly who she's talking about. The room is full of whispers. Who would be crazy enough to bring the enemy right into their stronghold? Well, Lidia will show them. Aech will show them. Lidia knows Aech better than anyone else in the Badlands, and she knows that Aech isn’t committed to the Oasis itself. She’s committed to innovation, and if there’s one word to describe the Badlands, it’s innovative.

Fisher eventually silences the room, and the remaining six introduce their candidates. Just like Max said, there’s four actual people, and four who are known just by their tags. There’s an almost perfectly even split of men and women as well, with five women and three men. They all seem competent, but none of them have the raw intelligence and passion of Aech, at least as far as Lidia can tell, but maybe she’s become a little biased. Just a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so because I'm a nerd I have a playlist specifically for writing this fic...idk if anyone would be interested but I figured I'd include a couple songs with each chapter (regardless of whether they're related to that chapter or not lol)
> 
> anyways today's top three were Julia by SZA, Jump by Van Halen, and Show Me How To Love by Bend Sinister and Danny Vacon


	13. Aech

“Come on, we’ve got a room for you right downstairs,” Justin says to Aech. “The others are all moved in already, so your first test will be tomorrow.”

“First test?” This really is the strangest job interview Aech has ever had.

“Yeah, it’s not much,” Justin says nonchalantly. “We just want to see how each of you interacts with the Badlands once you’re inside. It’ll be a pretty easy mission, but it should hopefully weed out anyone who’s not actually qualified.”

“So how did the others get chosen for this little game of yours? They weren’t all there when you decided to ruin Wade’s party, right?”

Justin blushes. “Sorry about that, by the way. We wanted to make sure people would know who we were before starting the competition.”

“And you couldn’t advertise like any other company out there? Or at least have your own release?”

Justin shrugs. “Look, I don’t make these decisions. That’s all Fisher, and he doesn’t have to explain himself to anyone.”

Aech finds this a bit suspicious, that Fisher (the CEO? she presumes) doesn’t have any sort of board or council, but she supposes that if she were in charge of something like this, she wouldn’t want to share the power either. While it’s great to have people to support and help you, the vision gets lost with too many ideas. The Badlands have the strongest sense of self she’s ever seen in a program. It makes sense that there’s only one man behind it all. She’s going to have to meet with him and have a couple words about appropriate launch party locations, though.

* * *

They’re all suited up to enter the Oasis, which makes Aech question what’s really going on. The haptic tech is made exclusively to work with the Oasis - it’s built right into the headset. The suits must have been altered if they’re going to enter the Badlands instead, but if they were going to change them that drastically, it would have just been easier to build the suits from scratch. Aech doesn’t know what’s going on, but she’s determine to find out from Lidia, who’s wearing an identical suit and standing in front of the four of them: Ashley, a body-builder type blonde woman; Shri, an Indian kid who says he’s twenty, but looks more like fifteen; Maria, a tall Hispanic woman; and Aech herself. 

“Congratulations on making it this far,” she shouts like a drill sergeant, pacing in front of them. “Your first mission is to retrieve an object from within the Badlands. This is a simple test of your ability to use an unknown platform. You are all capable. This is not an impossible task, regardless of what it seems like. Are you ready?”

“Um,” Aech says. “Why are we entering the Oasis?”

Ashley snickers. “That’s only the suits, stupid. They’ve just only been used with the Oasis before. There’s no reason why we can’t get to the Badlands from these.”

“Actually, Aech is right,” Lidia announces, looking Ashley square in the eyes. “These suits were made for the Oasis, with its software already part of the system. There’s no way to upload a direct route to the Badlands into these.” Aech can see the clear disgust on Lidia’s face, and makes a note of it. Lidia seems intelligent - if she hates Ashley, she must have a good reason. Aech will have to look out for her.

“So then why are we going to the Oasis? Do you need their technology to access yours?” Maria asks. “Because if that’s the case, I’m out. I thought you were the future, not just an expansion pack of Halliday’s.” Aech secretly agrees with her. Their concept’s absolutely incredible, but it’s worthless if it can’t be accessed on its own.

“We have four more recruits who haven’t been able to come here in person. They’re waiting for us in the Oasis, so that you can all jump into the Badlands together,” Lidia explains.

“But could we theoretically go to the Badlands without being in the Oasis first?” Shri asks. 

“You can get to the Badlands from literally anywhere,” Lidia assures him, but he still seems a bit skeptical, not without just cause. Lidia hasn’t done anything to earn their trust yet. Even Aech, who’s figured out a fair amount of the Badlands, doesn’t know how to access it yet. This better be one hell of a convincing demonstration, she thinks, as she lowers the headset over her eyes.

Once the Oasis has pixelated in around her, Aech takes in the view. They’re in the middle of a ruined town built of stone, walls all crumbling and covered with ivy. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been there in thousands of years, but that doesn’t mean much when the whole simulation was coded less than a hundred years ago. Still, it seems isolated enough that no Oasis players would accidentally stumble upon them. Wade’s the only one who could discover them, and there’s practically no chance of that.

The other three are equally intrigued, and Shri’s already left the group to poke at one of the more intact buildings when the last four competitors walk in. Aech is instantly captivated by a slight brunette at the back of the pack. She seems familiar, but Aech can’t place how she might know her. 

She’s lost in thought when a man taps her on the shoulder. 

“Excuse me? Aech?” She whirls around to see a forty-something year old man. “I just wanted to introduce myself. My name’s Jorge. You did a great thing back then, saving the Oasis, you know. My daughter was absolutely obsessed with your skills, she’s going to college for computer science, actually, I think because of you,” he trails off awkwardly. “Anyways, I just wanted to thank you for being a great role model for her, um,”

Aech gives him her biggest smile. “Nice to meet you Jorge,” she says. It’ll be good to have someone positive around to counteract Ashley, and Jorge seems like a good ally.

“Gather round, everyone,” Lidia says. “We’re about to begin. You can socialize later - with those of you who are left.” There’s a bit of murmuring at that. Lidia smiles and lets them wonder for a beat before demanding their attention again. “Whoever doesn’t complete the challenge will be eliminated. Sorry,” she says, not sorry at all. “We have to choose only one of you somehow.”

“And organizing this like a reality TV show is the best way?” Maria says under her breath behind Aech, who turns her head slightly to hide her laugh from Lidia. 

It wouldn’t have mattered if Lidia had seen her anyways, because she’s already passing out what appear to be small computer chips to the eight of them. As Aech takes one, she can feel it press into her hand in real life. She pulls up her inventory, and sure enough, it doesn’t appear even when she tries to add it. It’s real, and breaking the boundaries of the Oasis in ways that could either do a lot of good for the world, or cause complete anarchy in the wrong hands. She looks at Lidia in awe. These chips have extreme power, and Lidia’s refusing to meet her eyes and acknowledge it.

“Alright, does everyone have a chip?” Lidia knows the answer - there’s only eight of them, after all - but it’s an effective way to get their attention. “Push the chip into your upper arm so it sits just under the skin. Here in the Oasis you should be able to do this without any pain, but in the real world you’d need surgery to have this done, which is why we’re going to be entering the Badlands from here until you’re certain of your commitment.”

Damn. Aech knows that she’s creating an indestructible copy of all her actions for all the world to see every time she enters the Oasis, but for them to have access to her in the real world too…it’s like something out of one of those 2010 dystopian movies, where the evil corporations would take away people’s privacy just for the sake of showing the audience that they were evil and not to be trusted. Aech tentatively puts the chip on her arm, and is relieved to realize that it went back to being virtual as soon as she put pressure on it. It’s soon enveloped in her arm, but she can still feel it if she presses on the area.

“Are you all ready?” Lidia asks. They all nod. “Then I’m sending you in in three…two…”

“One!” The world dissolves, and Aech is finally in the Badlands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one took so long! I'm finally out of school, so I actually have time to write 1400 word chapters now lol
> 
> Hope you enjoy it!


	14. Aech

Aech can’t see more than a yard in front of her through all the mist and thick vegetation. The Badlands look, quite literally, like a glitching green swamp, where things are constantly popping in and out of existence. She spins around, trying to find any of the others, calling out their names.

“Jorge-”

“Aech-”

And then they’ve found each other, but there’s still no sign of the others. Or whatever it is that they’re supposed to be finding, anyways, since this is some sort of scavenger hunt, apparently.

“Do you know where everyone else ended up?” Jorge asks. Aech shakes her head. “And where’s Lidia to explain any of this?”

At the mention of her name, Lidia walks out from behind a fold in the simulation, like she’s crossing from another plane.

“Congratulations,” she says casually, handing Aech a smooth, round rock. “You’re the first ones to figure anything out here. This should help you with the next part. Good luck,” and with that she’s disappeared back into the green swirling around them.

Aech and Jorge exchange a look, confused.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, but Aech doesn’t hear him. She’s already running through everything she knows so far about the Badlands, flipping the rock over and over in her hand. It’s almost definitely linked to their words, since she and Jorge only found each other once they called out to each other at the same time. But then when Jorge mentioned Lidia and she appeared, Aech didn’t hear her say anything. It’s possible that the rules don’t apply to her, if she has admin privileges, or if she’s able to directly access the code to change it…

The code.

Aech has literally seen the code. She knows exactly how it works. 

“It’s our minds,” she blurts out. Jorge gives her a look, clearly confused. “I’ve seen the code, I know what they’re doing here. It’s,” she pauses, contemplating how to explain it. “It...it takes from multiple people, it’s their collective brain power,” she stops. Jorge starts to ask a question, but she holds up her hand, trying to condense her thoughts. 

“If we’re both thinking about the same thing, if we both think it’s real, then it exists. The Badlands are purely perception. It’s whatever you think it is.”

“So if we both think we’re, say, in a desert…” he looks to her for confirmation.

“Come on, let’s try it,” she suggests and then it’s dry and hot and Aech can feel the sand in her throat and there’s nothing that seems more real until they drop the illusion and the swamp returns. 

“Wow,” he says.

“Yeah,” she agrees. “What do you think this is for?”

“The rock?” he studies it, looking at it from all sides. “It looks normal, like any rock you could find at the bottom of a river, or somewhere, I don’t know,” he says. Aech considers this, thinking about where it could have come from, and then they’re on the banks of a wide river, slowly meandering its way through a thick pine forest. 

“This is incredible,” Jorge marvels, examining a branch. “The level of detail they managed to include is absolutely insane.”

“That’s all you,” Aech reminds him. “All us, I guess I should say, since it takes from pieces of both our memories. I’d bet that with more people here, it’d be even closer to the real world.”

“You think you two could get this amount of detail on your own?” Maria walks out of the forest on the other side of the river with Shri and an elderly woman that Aech recognizes as one of the competitors from the Oasis. “This is Edith. She grew up in a forest in the middle of nowhere in Vermont.”

Edith smiles. “I was a Girl Scout too, so I had to spend months memorising how to tell all the different plants apart. If you look at the needles, you’ll see that these are all fir trees. It is a bit odd, though, that there are only conifers growing here. You’d typically expect to see some sycamores right on the river bank or,” she stops suddenly. Right before their eyes, the trees are shortening, their branches spreading out and needles widening into leaves.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Edith says. “I wonder how much else we can change just with our thoughts like that,”

And they can change almost everything, they discover, after a bit of experimenting. The only thing that remains constant is the river. No matter what happens to the land around it, the river always keeps its present course, down to the smallest eddy.

“I say we follow it to its source,” Maria suggests.

“No way,” Shri interrupts. “If we want to find where the rock’s from, we gotta go to the mouth. That’s where the smoothest rocks will be,” he says, like it’s an obvious truth.

“I agree with Shri,” Jorge says. “I think that’s our best bet.”

“Then let’s get walking!” Aech says, already following the current downstream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't mind me having two chapters from Aech's perspective in a row... I swear Samantha's next okay - also only for this fic would I have to google both ancient legends and types of trees lol we're just all over the place here
> 
> anyways comments are always appreciated! thanks for reading!


	15. Samantha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which ya girl finally starts going by Samantha again (!) and has a tiny little bit of a gay crisis (!!!)

Holy fucking shit. Helen Harris is working with the Badlands? Sam can’t believe it. There’s absolutely no way she would ever… Sam reconsiders. Okay, yeah, she can believe it. But still! For her to run into Helen here is insane. It’s crazy. It seems like there’s no possible way for this to be a coincidence. So what’s Helen actually doing here? Has she been associated with the Badlands this whole time? Sam scraps that thought pretty soon after its inception, though. If she was already one of them, she wouldn’t be part of this competition, she’d already have a job. Is she spying for Wade? Sam doesn’t think so. As far as she knows, they haven’t spoken in years, but the public has no idea. Everyone associates her with the Oasis. She’d be easily spotted as a suspect for corporate espionage. And on that note, why hasn’t she? No sane corporation would hire the face of their competitor. Unless…

Unless…

Sam needs to stop overthinking. She’ll figure out Helen’s deal soon enough, and right now, it’s more important that she finds a way out of this swamp and wins this competition. 

She thinks back to her first glance at the Badlands. She was never a classy coder, never formally learned efficiency. But she did teach herself how to code effectively, and knows how to find the actual purpose in between all the fancy formatting. The hint of code she was able to make out was almost entirely nonsense, but even the most nonsensical of code has a function. And Sam knows exactly how to exploit it.

_Lidia’s shaking her hand. Georgia’s cheering, surrounded by the other competitors and Badlands employees. It all feels so real, and Sam believes it. She’s won this competition. She did it by herself, and she did it for herself. She’s no longer trapped into being someone else. Finally, finally she’s able to show her true potential to change the world. And damn, does it feel good! Samantha looks out into the crowd. Wade’s nowhere to be seen, but Helen’s right up front, clapping and shaking her head. Samantha’s not entirely sure why Helen’s approval is so important to her, but it just feels right, somehow. She grins broadly and meets her eyes, but then the strangest thing happens. Helen winks and pinches her own arm with a flourish before turning around to leave. Samantha’s mouth falls open in confusion. What’s that supposed to mean? She starts pushing people out of the way in a hurry before realizing that the people aren’t moving, they’re disappearing as she touches them. Her confusion turns to concern as she whirls around, looking for an explanation_

__

__

_“Helen? Helen?”_

And then, “Helen!” because she’s there right in front of Samantha, and she’s pretty sure that this is actually real. “What’s going on?”

“Diana, right?” Helen looks a bit confused, like she’s trying to remember something, and it takes Samantha a moment to remember that she’s here in disguise.

“Uh, yeah, Diana! That is me, um. Yes.” Wow. Since when was she this much of an idiot? And around Helen, especially? They’ve known each other for ages, even if Helen doesn’t know who she is right now. But Samantha does, so why is she the one who seems to have forgotten how to act? Helen’s explaining what they know about the Badlands, so even though Samantha’s figured it out as well, she figures that Diana has the right to be confused. After all, she did basically just teleport to some strange new place. That’s enough to throw someone off their game, right?

“I was just trying to remember who else was part of this,” Helen goes on. “Lucky we were thinking of each other at the same time.”

Yeah. Really lucky.

“What a coincidence,” Samantha agrees. “So what’s our next step? It seems like you guys have gotten pretty far in this.”

“Well, Aech and Jorge got this from Lidia,” a young Indian kid holds out a rock. “We think we’re supposed to find where it came from, so we’re headed towards the mouth of the river. There were a couple others with us too, Maria and Edith, but they decided to look towards the source instead,” he shakes his head, clearly finding that idea stupid. “I’m Shri, by the way.”

“Diana,” she says absentmindedly as she shakes his hand, trying to find the meaning of the rock. “Have you tried breaking the rock open? It feels too light to be solid all the way through.”

She’s just thinking out loud here, but Jorge suddenly turns around from where he’d been forging a path.

“That’s not a bad idea,” he says. “So what do we do? I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I can break a rock with my bare hands,” he laughs. 

“And we can’t just imagine it broken, can we?” Shri asks. “Since we don’t know what’s on the inside, right? I don’t think that would work either.”

Helen’s been strangely quiet this whole time, but now she turns to study Samantha’s avatar’s face. “I think,” she begins, making sure to look at Helen as she tells them her plan. “We just need a hammer.”

“And do you have one? A hammer, I mean?” Shri looks doubtful.

“Yes,” Helen says, finally. They all look at her in shock. “Don’t you see it?”

Jorge and Shri still look a bit confused, but Samantha catches Helen’s drift.

“I’m holding it right now,” she says. “A large one, like the ones that sculptors have for chipping away at marble.” As she speaks, she can feel it materializing in her grip. She quickly sets down the rock on the ground and begins to raise her arm, preparing to strike it open. “It’s large, and hefty,” she swings her arm down. “And definitely strong enough to break open a rock!” 

And then she hears a sharp snap, and feels the shock through her forearm as the hammer connects with the rock, and Shri lets out a whoop, and when she looks up Helen’s already looking right back at her and she nods her approval, smiling a bit, and Samantha’s too caught up in that smile to be proud that she figured it out, or to even look at what they found.

“It’s another rock,” Jorge says dejectedly. “Now what are we supposed to do with another rock?”

“It’s a different kind of rock,” Shri explains, the resident geology expert, apparently. “See all the holes in it? It must’ve been formed by a volcano. That’s why it would have felt so light, too, since it’s practically all air.”

“When you say volcano,” Helen says deliberately. “That couldn’t be that mountain over there now, could it?” She drops the façade and grins. “Looks like we’re headed in the right direction. Nice job, Diana.”

Samantha blushes and mumbles a thanks, but they’ve already started walking towards the mountain in the distance.

* * *

About an hour into their hike, Samantha notices some smoke coming from the top of the mountain. Well, maybe it’s not really active, she reasons. Sleeping volcanoes have smoke all the time, right? It’s not going to erupt. Right? But she knows that it will, because this is a challenge after all, and if she’s learned one thing from all these years playing video games, it’s that everything is designed to stop you from winning. She sighs, and tries to remember everything she learned in high school about volcanic activity. Because even when the entire world is built to destroy you, there’s always a way out if you know the right secrets.

They’ve been walking for almost two hours now, and Samantha’s beginning to feel it in her calves. It may be virtual, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s still hooked up to a high-tech, 360-degree swivel treadmill back in the real world. At least they’re getting closer. As much as her legs would like a break, the increasing slope is an encouraging sign. 

The sight of their friends up ahead is even more encouraging.

“Maria?” Helen calls out. “I thought you and Edith were heading the other way.”

“I thought you were going the other way,” Maria says, confused. “We just followed the river.” And sure enough, the river’s become just a small trickle at this point, hidden behind the rocky landscape.

After trading stories, they decide to keep following the stream up the mountain. The closer they get, the more Samantha starts to feel the thrill of the hunt again. This is what she loves - piecing the clues together and the satisfaction of finally figuring something out. There’s nothing better in the whole world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all! sorry this one took forever - we had a massive heat wave and hot weather + hot laptop = procrastination
> 
> also we've passed the 10,000 word mark! and that deserves a celebration - here's to 10,000 more!


	16. Lidia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god I'm so sorry it took me a month to get this one done it isn't even edited or anything so the quality won't make up for the lateness or anything
> 
> but at least we're continuing with the plot right? and the next chapter's gonna be super angsty so there's that to look forward to

After distributing the first clue, Lidia returns to the real world. She passed through the Oasis to enter, just like everyone else, but she doesn’t bother with the middle man this time. She put the Badlands chip in her arm a month after she was initially hired, and would’ve done it earlier if Fisher would let her. Lidia is not the type of woman to do things in halves.

Back at headquarters, all the screens have been repurposed to show the candidates. Fisher is striding back and forth, hands clasped behind his back, as he shares his thoughts with the group.

“Jorge and Aech - impressive,” he says when Lidia walks in. His back is to her, but the comment is directed at her all the same. “They were first?”

“Yes,” she replies. “Ashley and Byron were the only other pair that found me, but I waited until everyone had at least seen the rock to return.”

“Good,” he says sharply, and then he turns his attention back to observing the contestants. Lidia moves to stand with Wanda and Georgia, who are standing in front of Diana’s feed. Wanda’s as serious as ever, legs spread in a wide stance with her arms crossed, but Georgia’s practically bouncing. She looks like she’s ready to jump into the Badlands and help Diana herself.

“Did you hear?” Georgia leaps in front of Lidia like an overly enthusiastic puppy dog. “She called Aech _Helen_. I thought no one called her Helen.” Her eyes are wide and somewhat accusatory as she looks at Lidia, like she has the answer squirrelled away somewhere and is just refusing to share it.

Lidia shrugs.

Georgia looks like she’s going to interrogate Lidia further when Wanda suddenly throws out an arm to get their attention.

“They’ve made it,” she says in a hushed tone. “They’ve _all_ made it.”

This makes Lidia stand up a bit straighter. She wasn’t expecting all eight candidates to make it to the volcano, though she probably shouldn’t have been so surprised. After all, they had split up into only two groups, each with one of the false rocks. It does come as a shock that Ashley was able to figure out the puzzle, but Lidia supposes that Byron might have been the one to find the hidden igneous rock within the one she handed out. He might end up being a serious contender, and she notes that in her mental dossier, then turns her attention back to the scene on the screens in front of her.

There is only one entrance to the volcano. It is a narrow opening above the treeline, a triangular parting of the gray stone. The river flows from within the mountain, bottlenecked by the opening and crashing out into the daylight. Ashley and Byron have reached it first, with the other group a couple hundred feet downstream from them. The entire room goes quiet as Ashley opens her mouth to speak to Byron.

“Well?” Her voice sticks in her throat. It seems to take a great effort for her to get the monosyllabic word out.

“What do you mean?” Byron speaks softly and deliberately. Lidia isn’t sure if that’s his natural speech pattern, or just the one best suited to dealing with Ashley.

Ashley harrumphs, a sound that she is clearly more accustomed to making, and pushes past him through the rock passageway to the heart of the volcano.

The feed switches to within the volcano. It is reminiscent of a primordial world, water bubbling up out of a spring in the center and streaming over the still-molten lava. The air is thick and seems to coagulate around Ashley’s relatively cool body. The complete effect is somewhat similar to a gaseous planet, with layers of air, then water, lava, and rock, and altogether unsuitable for human life. 

Ashley coughs and stumbles forward, falling to her knees in the stream and then jumping up back onto solid rock as she comes into contact with the hot lava underneath. Lidia waits to see what her next move is. She follows Ashley’s eyes to where the hilts of four swords are poking out of the central spring. The task is clear, and after figuring out the mechanics of the Badlands, the solution is straightforward as well. The difficulty comes in convincing yourself that you’re walking on solid ground, and not lava that’s over a thousand degrees.

This is a test of willpower more than anything else, and, though Lidia hates to admit it, Ashley is nothing if not stubborn. This should be a piece of cake for her.

It is.

Ashley steels herself and runs the three hundred or so meters to the center of the volcano, grabs one of the swords, and is promptly brought out of the Badlands and back to the location in the Oasis that they all originally left from, where Fisher is waiting to congratulate her.

Lidia turns her attention back to the screens, where Aech’s group has caught up with Byron outside the volcano.

“Do you know what’s inside?” Aech asks him. He shakes his head, a bit put off by her interrogative tone. “Well, only one way to find out,” she says as she steps inside. Diana, Jorge, Maria, and Shri follow her, but Edith kneels down outside to talk to Byron.

“We just have to get those swords?” Shri asks. 

“I guess so,” Jorge shrugs. 

“Yeah, we only have to walk across a field of lava to get there. No big deal,” Maria rolls her eyes.

“It can’t be that hard, right? I mean, if Ashley could do it, we can do it. I say we just go for it,” Shri says brashly, and with that he steps confidently out onto the lava, splashing a bit of water where he puts his feet down. He turns around, grins, and then jogs over and grabs a sword. Once his fist is closed around the hilt, he pixelates and disappears from the Badlands.

The others exchange a look of surprise when he makes it all the way without getting burned or sinking down at all, Maria raising one eyebrow in a perfect arch.

“Well then,” she says. She starts to follow him out and screams as soon as both of her feet touch the lava and promptly sink down a couple inches.

“Maria!” Aech screams. She leans forward, trying to grab onto Maria, who’s being pulled down deeper into the volcano. Maria flails around, but the lava is consuming her at a faster and faster rate, and there’s nothing any of them can do but watch as she sinks out of view until there’s no trace of her left.

The pain at the loss of Maria is so clear on all of their faces that Lidia almost forgets herself and feels it as well. She looks over at Georgia, who’s muttering, “it’s okay! She’s fine! She didn’t feel anything!” under her breath at the figures on the screen. At least Lidia keeps her empathy on the inside. 

Aech, Jorge, and Diana exchange a look. There’s three of them left, and only two swords. 

“I think we should all go for it,” Aech says eventually. She doesn’t say the second part: because not all of us might make it.

Diana nods hesitantly and steps forward, letting out a sigh of relief when she isn’t burned. Aech and Jorge follow her, throwing up water behind their feet as they run, not wanting to be stuck on the lava for any longer than they have to.

They reach the swords. Lidia is holding her breath, waiting to see who will step down to let the other two move on. She doesn’t think they’ll fight over it. She hopes they don’t fight over it.

“Diana,” Aech says. She turns and looks her straight in the eyes. “You figured out the puzzle. I think you should take one of them.” 

Jorge nods. “Both of you,” he whispers. “It needs to be both of you.” He pauses. “I’m just lucky to have been here, you know? Anyways, um. Good luck.”

“It’s been an honor, Jorge,” Aech says, bowing her head slightly as she shakes his hand. “Now, shall we?” 

Aech and Diana reach out and take the last two swords. Lidia and Georgia both let out a sigh of relief. They’ve made it, and lived to fight another day.


	17. Wade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey sorry for the wait everyone! School's started up again for me (senior year woot woot!) and I've been working double shifts, but I should be back down to regular hours within a month, so most likely I'll have more time to write then, but I also just started rehearsals for a play, so who knows anymore. Hopefully this chapter makes up for the wait though - I've had it planned for a while, but the actual writing of it was quite an undertaking! I'm very proud of how it came out though, especially since it's been the only constant in all of the overall plots I've considered for this story.
> 
> ALSO we reached 1000 hits and I'm SHOOK!!!! This story's been clicked on over a thousand times!!! That's absolutely wild - thank you so much to everyone for reading - it means a lot to me :)
> 
> Anyways, kudos and comments are always appreciated <3 love you guys

Wade has been considering his options all day. What to do with the Badlands. What to do with the Oasis. What to do with himself. He’s had a full twenty four hours (one thousand four hundred and forty minutes, eighty six thousand and four hundred seconds) since the Badlands announcement to try and figure it out. He wishes he could just ignore it all. Maybe he’ll wake up in Sam’s arms tomorrow and she’ll tell him that it was all a bad dream and that she loves him, and then he’ll tell her that he loves her too, and maybe it’ll be true and they’ll both mean it this time. But until then, he has to get through this nightmare on his own. 

No matter how much he wants to, he can’t ignore the truth. The Oasis is no longer the only virtual world, and it’s not even the best one. Reporters, lawyers, and various executives have been hounding him for an explanation all day. When will they figure out that he doesn’t know any more than they do? He’s been shuffled from meeting to press conference to meeting and back again, answering the same questions each time and giving the same answers each time.

“No, it couldn’t have been one of our employees.” “Yes, we figured eventually there would be a competitor to the Oasis.” “No, there’s no threat.” “Yes, we’re looking into it.” “No, that wasn’t just a publicity stunt for us.” “Yes, the situation is completely under control.” They aren't all lies, not exactly.

It’s after dark when Wade finally manages to sneak away. He stands in a narrow alley between two short buildings. Fluorescent lights line the perimeters of both of their roofs, causing harsh alternating shapes of scintillating white and obscured murkiness. It’s not the dimly isolated hideaway that he was looking for, but it’ll do. The leaves on the obligatory environmentally friendly tree are just beginning to show the first signs of autumn, their bright reds and oranges turned to a sickly brown in the lighting, and the few green leaves left can barely be seen in the shadows. Summer is gone, and the world is dying. Changing. Wade revels in the slight chill and watches his breath as it swirls through the air and dissipates like smoke, invisibly polluting the world. It has been too hot inside all day, with the rooms full past fire safety limits, and the camera flashes didn’t help. He takes his hands out of his suit pockets where they’ve been shoved into clenched fists all day, and stretches his arms out, leaning back as if the night sky might swallow him up if he wishes hard enough. He imagines he can see the stars, somehow, through all of the light pollution.

“Are you Parzival?”

Wade jumps, but it’s only a child standing there, looking up at him with her uneven pigtails and tiny Atari t-shirt. 

“Are you hiding?” she asks. Wade continues to stare at her in confusion. “I wanted to hide from all the people. They came to our apartment for my mama. She’s a vice assistant director,” the girl pronounces the title deliberately; she’s clearly practiced saying it before and wears the statement as an object of pride. “I go to the Oasis when I’m scared but my mama wouldn’t let me this time. She told me to go play outside.”

“How long have you been outside?” Wade’s voice is creaky. He cringes a bit at the sound. Is his throat sore from talking all day, or has he grown old from this world? Where is the invincible Parzival now?

The girl’s forehead crinkles, and her mouth opens slightly as she cocks her head. “I dunno. I left before lunch, I think?”

“Come on,” Wade’s expression softens and he takes her hand. “Let’s get you home.”

Thankfully, she’s only been wandering around in circles all afternoon, and the pair quickly arrives at the front step of her apartment building. Wade shudders to think of how far she could’ve gone in the same amount of time. Even with her short legs, she could’ve easily made to the edge of the city, and then to who knows where. She could’ve been lost to the world. It is a possibility that frightens Wade more than he’d like to admit. 

“Do you need me to take you down to your floor?”

“No,” she says and starts to open the glass door, but then pauses and looks back at him, a question beginning to show on her face. Wade smiles at her, encouraging her to ask. 

“What do you do when you get scared?” 

Wade ponders this for a moment, but he already knows the answer.

“I hide,” he says. Her face drops, another victim of hero worship. This is not the answer she’s looking for, but Wade’s not done talking yet. “I hide, and I wait. And then, when I’m ready, on my own terms, I face whatever’s scaring me.” It’s what he did with the IOI, and he thinks it’s what he needs to do now.

She looks at him with a new understanding in her face, and then turns and walks back into the building. She doesn’t say goodbye or look back at him.

Wade watches as she gets into the elevator that’ll take her back down to her mama. He sinks back onto his heels, shoulders slouched, head bowed slightly. The confusion in his brain is gone now, but it’s replaced with an uncertainty of a different strain. He knows the direction he must travel, but he doesn’t know how far to go. He doesn’t know how far he can go, but he does know that he has to give all he’s got, or die for the trying.

Sam’s asleep when Wade finally returns to their house. She looks happy, somehow, lying there, her hair a messy halo around her face. He smiles, committing the image to memory, and gently slides the door closed again. It is the last time he will see her in this world.

Wade suits up, tightening straps and pulling on his haptic gloves. He pauses before lowering the visor. This is not the point of no return, but he has to pretend it is. If he lets himself stop to think about his decided purpose, he knows he won’t be able to go through with it. Failure is not an option for him, not here, not now. 

He lowers the visor and enters the Oasis one last time. 

* * *

The next morning, his body is found dead on the floor by his wife, Samantha. The service is held that very day. It is a small, private affair. Only Samantha, Helen, Akihide, Toshiro, and Hanako are there. They speak little. They cry little. 

“To Parzival,” Helen says at last.

“To Parzival,” they echo.


	18. Aech

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the huge break - I'm a high school senior this year so I had to finish college applications but most of them are done and submitted! I've got another round due in January so I might be MIA around then too. 
> 
> Anyways I'm still not emotionally stable after making myself write the last chapter and idk that this one is any better but uhh they'll get a happy ending? Probably? I hope so lol

Georgia wakes her up far too early the next morning. At first she thinks it might be the next test, but the look on Georgia’s face and the silent haste she uses in herding Aech out of the room quickly eliminates that possibility. 

“I'm sorry,” she says, handing Aech a cell phone. “I'm so, so sorry.” Aech starts to ask her about what's happening, but she's already left. Aech looks at the phone in her hand, considers it. She holds it like a ticking time bomb. Why was Georgia sorry? What's going on?

“Hello?” she asks hesitantly. It's unlike her to speak so gingerly, but this whole experience has been unlike anything she's ever been through. 

She's more than a little shaken when she hears Samantha (Sam, she reminds herself - Aech knows what it's like to need a different name) through the speaker. Her voice is tinny and distorted, but it's definitely her. 

“Helen?” She sounds panicked. 

“Hey Sam,” Aech says, trying to be nonchalant. She's worried, though. She hasn't talked to Sam in years, not really, and judging from their last conversation, she wouldn't voluntarily reach out to Aech unless something dire had happened. What’s wrong?

“Oh thank god,” Sam says. “You’re there.”

“I’m here,” she reassures Sam instinctively, but then she comes to a sudden realization. Sam doesn’t need _that_ kind of emotional reassurance. Shit. Sam called a Badlands phone number. She knows that Aech is definitely with the Badlands now. She’s going to think that Aech was the one to sell them out. But didn’t she, in a way? She wasn’t the one to hijack Wade’s celebration, but she did jump ship as soon as possible. Her behavior, her disappearance, the whole thing - it seems suspicious, and rightly so. 

“How did you get this number?” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Sam says quickly. Too quickly, Aech thinks, but at least she isn’t immediately being accused of anything. “You need to come back, Helen. We-” her voice cracks. “I need you.”

Aech’s heart isn’t sure whether it should be sinking or sailing at that. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s-” Her breath catches, and a small whimper cuts through the static like an old serrated knife. Aech can intimately envision the sob coming out of Sam’s ethereally broken face. It is a tableau of ugliness - all the more dissonant because of the beauty that should be there but is not. The sound is disconcerting, and all Aech wants is to erase it from her mind and pretend that such pain could never come from someone as strong as Sam.

“It’s-” Sam tries again, and this time the words offer no resistance. They tumble out of her mouth like a waterfall, destroying even the hardest of stones.

“It’s Wade.” The moment begins to play in slow motion and Aech feels like she is living through a memory, where time does not work as it should. An eternity stretches out ahead of her. The world is sharp now, but she knows that in hindsight she won’t be able to pull out any individual sensations from this conversation, only dread and a feeling of impounding despair crashing down over her.

* * *

Aech walks down the fire escape, one step and then another, until she reaches the ground. She has no idea where she is, so she walks east, the sun in her eyes. She cries from the harsh early morning light as she walks, letting herself feel without thinking. The physical catharsis will do as much to help her as anything else. Eventually she reaches a road, and follows that to a bus stop. She doesn’t have any money on her, but the driver doesn’t even ask.

“I need to get to an airport,” she tells him. The driver, a kindly-looking old man, smiles and says something in response, but Aech is already half way down the aisle, looking for an empty seat. The bus appears fairly empty at first, but almost all of the rows have someone sitting in one of the seats. Aech normally avoids public transport interactions, but today it’s even more important for her to be alone. She doesn’t entirely trust herself alone with her feelings, but she trusts herself with other people even less.

She finally finds a seat in the very last row and begins to take account of the few possessions she has with her: only her tablet and the clothes on her back, but it should be enough. It has to be enough. After all, she only has to get to Chicago. That’s her goal. It’s the only thing she can focus on. All she has to do is get to Chicago. Focus on the goal. Judging from the cloudy weather and California license plates, she’s most likely in the San Francisco area. An hour or two of driving, max, and then a couple hours for a direct flight, and, counting for the time difference, she should arrive by mid-afternoon. The calculations keep her from dwelling too long on why she’s travelling in the first place, but she can’t do math forever.

She wants to talk to Sam, _needs_ to talk to her. She needs someone who understands. Wade was her best friend. No amount of time spent apart can erase that. No one knew her like Wade, and no one knew Wade like Sam. After all, it’s not just Aech who lost her best friend. Sam lost her husband. She must understand Aech’s pain. She has to. After all, she lost her greatest love.

Aech always found her comfort in metal and wood and inorganic creation, but she wondered what it might be like to be in love, to have and to hold and all that. She wondered what it would be like to wake up in the arms of a woman she called love. A woman she called wife, even. It all sounded too good to be true, so naturally she rejected the dream as anything possible. Maybe for some, but not for her. She had tried. Hanako had convinced her to go on a few blind dates over the years, but only a few had stayed the night. And even then, that was only sex, not love. 

She remembers a conversation she had with Parzival once, when he had tried to download a scandalous vid of one particular red haired gunter and ended up with a virus that she had to help him get rid of. It was fairly early on in their friendship, and he was impressed with how quickly she was able to isolate and remove the virus. What she didn’t tell him was how she had tried to download the exact same vid a week earlier, and had only just removed the virus from her own computer. 

Aech laughs to herself softly. They both had such huge crushes on her, despite the impossibility. She never told Z about her crush, of course. He always held out hope that someday their paths would cross and the great gunter Art3mis would notice the less well known, but equally great Parzival. She supposes his hopes weren’t actually so hopeless. After all, look at them now.

Her breath hitches and her throat swallows itself as her chest collapses inward like a black hole, destroying her from the inside out.

Look at them now.


	19. Samantha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow it's been a hot sec since I updated this huh
> 
> sorry to anyone who was expecting plot - this may or may not be yet another short chapter of sadness and angst but uhh que sera sera right? I promise there'll be plot real soon (and by soon I mean in an upcoming chapter not in actual time because clearly I'm just fantastic at updating frequently)

Samantha approaches Helen after the funeral, cautiously, like how you might approach a wild animal. She goes to speak, but pauses. How the _fuck_ is she supposed to handle this? She thought that she would know Helen better (understand her, maybe, somewhat) after spending time with her in the Badlands, but all she really knows is that knowing either Helen or Aech individually is worth nothing if she can’t see her as the full person. And Samantha can’t do that without giving away her secret identity as D1ana, and she can’t do that without acknowledging Helen’s involvement with the Badlands, and there’s absolutely no way she can do that. She just can’t, for her sake as much as Helen’s.

Helen - Aech - whoever the fuck she is - is just standing there, body oriented towards Wade’s grave, but not really looking at it. She has no expression on her face whatsoever. This concerns Samantha more than anything else about her unnaturally morose temperament. Even in the Oasis, her avatar always had some smirk, some internal dialogue playing out as a twitch of the eyebrows or twist of the mouth. Nearly everyone else kept on some sort of pleasant (or not, depending on the player) neutral expression on for upwards of ninety percent of the time. Either they didn’t have haptic gear sufficiently advanced enough to capturing every little movement of the face, or they wanted to hide it, like a poker face of sorts, but a poker face in a world where everyone was wearing a mask. Everyone except for Aech. That grinning bastard, always showing _exactly_ what was passing through their mind at any given moment. God, how Art3mis always wanted to wipe that grin off Aech’s face!

She bites her lip and smirks, thinking of Aech, then contorts her face into a grimace, thinking of Parzival, then smiles a bit, thinking of Wade. She thinks of Helen. She doesn’t know what to think. Her head and face parlay for a bit and eventually reach a conclusion that’s not any sort of reasonable compromise, or anything remotely close to how she really feels, but that’s perfectly alright. Samantha finally reaches out to Helen with her eyes and mouth rounded open slightly, concern and exhaustion all rolled into one perfectly crafted expression. She may have forgotten how to think like Sam, but her face has the muscle memory of the socialite down pat. 

“Helen?” she asks, but when Helen turns to face her, she realizes it isn’t a question, not really, not for her, not here, not now.

“Helen,” she says, a definite order. The quiver isn’t completely out of her voice, but it takes a back seat to Samantha’s only demand. “Stay with me tonight.”

And Helen doesn’t have any reaction at all as Samantha takes her hand and leads her to the black Bentley parked at the gates to the graveyard, but Samantha could swear that she blinked for just a bit longer than necessary and (maybe, just maybe) squeezed her hand back.

* * *

It is the next morning and Samantha hasn’t spoken to Helen any more than to point her to the guest bedroom, but she supposes that that’s alright. It doesn’t surprise her at all to learn that Helen’s made herself at home. She’s completely commandeered the kitchen and left behind a bit of spilled milk and oats, in addition to the glass and bowl filling up the sink. Maybe it doesn’t make perfect logical sense at first, but Samantha’s thrilled at the mess left behind. Helen was here, look, see, she ate breakfast. Even if she’s gone now, still, she was here once.

Samantha wanders out of the kitchen, too nauseous to make her customary protein shake. Those things always gave her indigestion on a good day, anyways. 

“Helen?” She hates how often she’s had to say her name like this over the past couple of days, all cautious and hesitant, like she needs an answer to reassure herself that Helen’s nearby, that she would instantly and instinctively respond to Samantha’s voice. She doesn’t get a reply. Was she expecting one? It doesn’t pain Samantha as much as she thinks it will to realize that yes, she was. Why _would_ she hear anything in response, though? Helen probably just took advantage of a place to stay, made herself breakfast, and left without troubling Samantha any more than she had to. 

Why does that hurt? It’s exactly what Sam, the old Sam, would have done. 

Oh.

That’s why.


End file.
